Posted:August 20, 2012

I have shown you how to install the SpazeDog Jelly Bean (JB) or Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) roms on your Nexus One before. However, one of the cool new features in Jelly Bean is called Google Now but is not currently being bundled with SpazeDog roms. Learn more about Google now and how to install it below.

Learn more about Google Now here - Google has a video explaining what it can do.

If you are using an ICS rom but still want to try Google Now, you are in luck, it is possible. Read about how to install Google Now on an ICS device over at xda-developers.

If you already have the SpazeDog Jelly Bean rom installed on your Nexus One, follow this link to xda-developers and download the latest version of the AROMA installer for Google Apps. Copy the zip file to your Nexus One's SD card.

Reboot the Nexus One into recovery → select "install from sdcard" → "choose zip from sdcard" → "gapps-jb-aromainstaller" (or whatever you named the zip you downloaded) as shown below.

Then just follow the prompts until you get to the selection of "Full Install" vs "Custom Install." Choose "Custom Install" and then select "Google Now - App." The offline dictation is not needed and it is very large - if you decide to install it make sure you have enough room on your system partition.

Now when the installation is complete, your phone will reboot and you will be able to use Google Now!

Posted:August 19, 2012

I decided to use the stock Jelly Bean (JB) boot animation found on xda-developers, but you can search for and use any one that you like.

If you use the above boot animation, the easiest way to install it is download the "flashable" version to your phone's SD card, reboot into recovery, then "install from zip" and install it.

You can also manually copy the bootanimation.zip to the correct folder "/data/local" using root explorer or a similar app directly on your phone.

If you are using a different boot animation that is not flashable and you do not want to manually copy the file on you phone, you can use adb to push it directly to your phone. Once you have found and downloaded the boot animation you want to put on your phone, copy it into the same folder where ADB is located - for me that is C:/android-sdk/platform tools, but will vary depending on your computer. Also, make sure the boot animation is a zip file named "bootanimation".

Plug in your Nexus One to your computer. Open the command prompt and cd to the location of ADB:

Posted:August 13, 2012

Overview

SpiderOak is a cloud storage and syncing service similar to Dropbox, Google Drive, or Copy. What sets SpiderOak apart from the others is their zero-knowledge policy regarding your data. All data is encrypted prior to being uploaded to SpiderOak's servers and you control the master encryption key derived from your password. While the other cloud storage providers mentioned seem to value ease of use and design over privacy and security, SpiderOak makes it clear the privacy is the most important thing to them. The fact that SpiderOak values privacy is excellent but the SpiderOak application could use some polish.